Streaming

How prepared is your business to unlock the power of video? Take this enterprise video maturity assessment to find out where your organization is today, where the market will be in 5 years, and what actions you can take now to close the gaps.

This self-assessment should take you less than three minutes, and it will provide you with a downloadable customized report with personalized recommendations from Forrester that you can share with others within your organization to help progress your business video initiatives.

The use of video in business is growing quickly because it has the power to transform every experience: for the prospect, for the customer, and for the employee. Whether creating marketing video assets or supporting customers with video chat customer service, firms are realizing the value of video. Explore the progress that you’ve made, and the opportunities that lie ahead.

Brandlive, the leading live video platform for brands and retail marketing today announced that it has livestreamed over 8,000 events, as part of a partnership with IBM Cloud Video. With this milestone, Brandlive confirms its position as the go-to resource for brands and retailers looking to interact with their audiences for sales enablement, marketing and commerce events.

In today’s saturated digital landscape, brands need an innovative method to cut through the noise and engage with their customers. By leveraging live video, companies can bolster their marketing strategies to more effectively interact with their audiences and foster relationships in real-time.

Brandlive empowers top brands like Adidas, GoPro, eBay, and Cabela’s to better communicate with their audiences by offering customers real-time access to experts, influencers, and executives. With 8,000 livestreamed events, it is clear that brands are harnessing live video and understand its myriad advantages: live video is more engaging, faster to produce, and drives more sales than recorded video.

“The greenest business trip is the one you don’t take,” GreenBiz founder and executive director Joel Makower recently noted in a New York Times story.

Businesses around the world are coming to the same conclusion. For these enterprises, shrinking their carbon footprints by reducing travel isn’t just a benevolent idea. It’s good business, helping them to cut costs while also appealing to environmentally conscious consumers.

According to the Air Transport Action Group, a nonprofit association representing all sectors of the air transport industry, flights produced 705 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2013. By replacing in-person meetings with videoconferencing and live events with online streaming video events, businesses can enjoy the benefits of live interaction without adding to the amount of carbon emissions in the atmosphere.

For example, if a New York-based business flies employees from its London location to the headquarters for a summit, each round trip flight would generate 1.53 metric tons of CO2 emissions (source: climatecare.org). By turning the event into an interactive online summit via live video, the company would save more than 3,300 pounds of carbon emissions per round-trip flight. And fewer emissions means cleaner air for everybody.

As a reminder of why this is so important, take a few moments to enjoy the view of our beautiful planet from space, courtesy of NASA’s live stream from the International Space Station. Also, check out the photos below of Ustreamers doing their part!

Happy Earth Day!

Caitlin, six-year-old daughter of Ustream legal counsel, Anne Ortel, started an Earth Club at her school last week to help students become more aware of environmental problems and come up with ideas for ways to help fight those problems. Over the weekend, Caitlin spoke with the nursery manager and a store manager at the local Orchard Supply Hardware and convinced them to donate a compost bin for her school’s lunch area for fruit and veggie discards at lunch. She also convinced them to send a garden worker from OSH to her school to explain composting at an assembly. Caitlin wants the compost to be used in the currently-empty planters scattered around her school and to have those planters filled with fruit and veggie plantings.

Ustreamer Linda Williams and her husband took a hands-on “Mow No Mo'” workshop on Saturday to learn how to convert water-guzzling lawns into beautiful, drought-tolerant native gardens through sheet-mulching.

On Sunday, February 1, millions of viewers will tune in to enjoy the Super Bowl and the surrounding interviews, reports, highlights and analysis. As you know, more and more of that video content is going online.

For example, NBCUniversal has announced that it will offer “Super Stream Sunday,” live-streaming 11 continuous hours of content related to the Super Bowl. And, many fans of the Seattle Seahawks are already familiar with the team’s popular Ustream channel, which boasts more than 3,000 subscribers and over 1.2 million views. What they may not know is that the Seahawks organization also uses Ustream for internal communications and live-streaming press conferences.

Another client unrelated to football for most of the season, uses their Ustream channel to broadcast football practice sessions for their ‘athletes.’ Yes, for those who prefer their running backs with four legs, Animal Planet will be live-streaming pre-game practice for the Puppy Bowl at http://www.apl.tv/puppy-bowl.htm starting Friday. In this annual favorite, puppies of all breeds take to a miniature field to “play in a winning combination of terrier tackles, touchdowns, puppy penalties, fumbles and Fido first downs.”

“The attacks were an attempt to limit transparency and, really, free speech,” Hunstable said. “It was highly organized; it was highly adaptive.” Ustream reported the attacks to Federal authorities; however, “there really wasn’t a clear way that they [could] help.”

Hunstable cites the recent Sony Pictures crisis as further evidence of the need for “clear protocols and cross-communication between the public and private sectors on how to handle this.”

Once upon a time, there was radio. Then came network TV. Then came cable. Then came satellite. Now the FCC is pondering a rule change that could move streaming video one step closer to taking the next seat at this table.

According to Streaming Media, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed an update to the Commission’s definition of multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD). The new rule would give streaming video services the same powers as cable and satellite companies to gain broadcast and cable content — similar to the change made in 1992 that gave satellite providers parity with cable.

“Today I am proposing to extend the same concept to the providers of linear, Internet-based services,” Wheeler wrote, “to encourage new video alternatives by opening up access to content previously locked on cable channels.”

Just this week, U.S. President Barack Obama joined supporters for what has come to be called “net neutrality” — the idea that service providers should treat all data equally. “This is a basic acknowledgment of the services ISPs provide to American homes and businesses,” the President’s statement reads, “and the straightforward obligations necessary to ensure the network works for everyone — not just one or two companies.”

If approved, the FCC’s move would let streaming-only bundled services compete more effectively by including content now standard to basic cable subscribers. That’s good news not only for streaming video providers, but also for consumers who want a wider range of choices.

For most people, September 15th was a day much like any other. But for Internet-based content providers — including Ustream — it was an important milestone in a story that will shape the future of the Internet.

On September 15, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officially closed the public comment period on its latest proposal concerning net neutrality: the principle that all data must be treated equally by Internet service providers (ISPs). If the proposal passes, it will alter the definition of net neutrality by allowing ISPs to charge extra for broadband “fast lanes” between select content providers and users.

With the public comment period now closed, the FCC is set to issue a decision.

Public response to the proposal has been unprecedented: 1.7 million comments from the public, most of them strongly against the proposal. In addition to the grassroots reaction, an open letter cosigned by some of the biggest companies on the Internet has petitioned the FCC to ban fast lanes.

One of the signatories to the open letter was Ustream CEO Brad Hunstable. Hunstable recently told the Daily Dot that the FCC proposal will “force Internet-based businesses to choose applications and ISPs based on their priority lanes systems.” He added that it would be “like having to choose between power companies that provided different voltages according to the electrical devices you planned to run.”

Today’s guest blog post comes from our friends at Indie Music Billboard, care of Bobby D in Costa Rica. His webcasts have focused on promoting, developing and inspiring human potential. He has empowered thousands of individuals from all walks of life in 50+ countries to achieve a life of freedom. Check out his Ustream channel

Rarely does any segment of the massive music industry garner as much excitement as Indie Musicians, Indie Radio Stations and Indie music lovers.

Sure we all love our favorite artists. Of course we swoon over their latest CD or single. Naturally we gravitate to listen to them. But, there is nowhere in the worldwide music industry that has the excitement and following as does the Indie Music genre.

Indie Music brings all three elements together, Artists, Radio stations and of course the music.

Mark your calendars for the next webinar in our Business Video Now series, entitled “Live Video for Hiring, Firing, and Everything in Between.” Inspired by recent research from Wainhouse Research and a creative video short from Vooza, you’ll be sure to walk away with a bevy of new information about live video technology. You might even want to try out Ustream for yourself!

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